A follow-up report to an earlier article by Jim Brunner in the Seattle Times, updated with information on this week's City Council action to extend the timeline on the bridge loan of City funds to afford the Seattle Center Foundation additional time to close the $4 million private funding shortfall (and, most likely, replace the public funding commitment that has failed to materialize with additional private fundraising):

The good news in all of this is that Pacific Northwest Ballet and Seattle Opera are able to dodge the Mayor's Draconian proposal to force them to apply (presumably substantial) facility surcharges to each ticket sold as a means of collecting the shortfall for at least two years. If the private fundraising now under discussion falls short, the City will return with a demand letter....

I saw a brief summary of the constructio on a local PBS channel the other night and I got the impression that this really is a fabulous place. I am looking forward to seeing it this weekend!! One good thing about the shortfall though, is - like it or not- the place is built. Fortunately we caught the tail end of the internet bubble just in time!

I did a "walk through" last night of the Marion Oliver McCaw Hall. The gala and public open house will be this weekend. It is just GORGEOUS! The colors of the Susan Brotman Auditorium are teal, shades of purple and red. The soaring lines of the balconies and mezzanines, the open, expansive lobby space, and beautiful, airy courtyard all make for a space that all Seattle-ites can be proud of. Ahhhh! It is truly a magical place.

I am pleased to report that an additional $2.2 million has been received from an anonymous donor. Of the outstanding $4 million promised from private sources, this most recent donation reduces the outstanding balance to $1.8 million.

It wasn't me! :p Someone asked me what the best part of opening night was, and I have to say that it was just seeing the big smiles on the PNB dancers faces at the end of the night. I am excited for myself, but even more excited for them. What a great place this is going to be for dances in the years to come!

SEATTLE, Aug. 3 — Opera buffs in Seattle have had several weeks to explore Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, as the Seattle Opera's extensively renovated home is now called. <a href=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/05/arts/music/05PARS.html target=_blank>more</a>

The city's new opera house - Marion Oliver McCaw Hall - promises a blaze of color, light and open space at a site that has celebrated music and melodrama in the Northwest since the 1920s.

Within this third incarnation are walls from the long-gone 1928 Civic Auditorium - dubbed "the House that Suds Built" for its first donor, saloon keeper James Osbourn - and acoustics from the second hall, built for the 1962 Century 21 World's Fair.

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